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It's the great gas robbery. And it's right before us in our utility bills.
When you next look in horror at your gas bill, think this: you are the unwitting victim of a gigantic game of risk shifting by the multinationals.
These companies have played the domestic customer on a break, because they saw something we didn't see two years ago.
And it's resulted in gas that was once destined for our heaters, cookers and manufacturing plants being sucked north to Gladstone where it is liquefied and sent to Japan, South Korea and China.
It's all about the price of oil
Those ginormous LNG projects in Queensland were pursued by their proponents on the industry-wide assumption that the price of oil would never dip below $US65 a barrel.
In fact, $US65 a barrel was the worst-case scenario when some of these projects were sanctioned.
Oil is now well south of that price and has been for some time. There's expectation the price of oil will remain relatively low for some time yet.
That might be good for motorists but not so good if you're a domestic gas consumer, even though the price of gas is linked — internationally at least — to the price of crude oil.
This sounds awfully illogical, but stick with me.
The state and federal governments, which also assumed a certain oil price trajectory, gave approval for LNG projects on the expectation that the proponents would develop their large reserves.
But investing in coal seam gas isn't as attractive as it once was. The cost of drill rigs, compressor stations, pipelines and other associated infrastructure have made new CSG wells more expensive than the gas we have been using on our stove tops and in our factories.
The LNG companies saw this coming two years ago and set about buying up the cheapest gas possible to fulfil their international contractual obligations.
It's meant that Gladstone's massive LNG trains are now sucking gas from as far as Victoria and South Australia.
Cheap gas for domestic consumers has disappeared
Spot prices for gas, once about $3 a gigajoule, have more than tripled (about $10 today, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator), and an Australian customer wanting 12 months guaranteed supply can expect to pay up to $20 a gigajoule for contracted gas.
Particularly galling is that Japanese householders, using gas once destined for our kitchens and manufacturing plants, are paying less than Australians.
LNG producers have decided against putting any more capital into CSG projects, leaving many of their own reserves undeveloped, in favour of long-term contracts of up to $8 a gigajoule from Bass Strait and Cooper Basin.
By deferring exploration and development of their own reserves, the LNG companies are effectively shifting the risk of these investment decisions to Australian customers.
It's hard not to conclude that the LNG producers are cheating the system.
Having secured a tenancy with the landlord, they are now asking someone else to pay the rent while they hoard their riches for when it can fetch more.
This is the LNG market in operation; a market which was allowed to develop in the blithe assumption that the price of oil would not fall so low and stay so stubbornly low.
Effective moratoria on new onshore gas projects in NSW, Victoria and Northern Territory — for coal seam gas and conventional gas wells — further squeeze the domestic market.
The Prime Minister's summoning of the gas chiefs to Canberra on Wednesday only advertised the limits of federal intervention in this area.
"We are a massive gas exporter. It is utterly untenable, unacceptable, for us to be in a position where domestic gas consumers — whether it's generators, whether it's businesses and industry, or whether it's families — cannot have access to affordable gas," Malcolm Turnbull said.
Everyone would agree with that sentiment, but what's to be done?
The PM made reference to the Commonwealth's "enormous power" under the Constitution over exports, but the idea of the Federal Government interfering in such a way would only invite sovereign risk concerns.
The Prime Minister's reminder to gas companies of their "social licence" was code for not aggravating the population or the Government through the abuse of market power.
More emotional blackmail than anything else, this is the sort of appeal to good corporate citizenry we've previously seen from governments in response to bastardry from the banks.
Of the guarantees that Mr Turnbull managed to extract from the gas chiefs, one was a promise to release gas during peak demands, such as during heat waves.
The fact this guarantee had to be sought reflects the imbalance in the relationship between government and the gas companies.
Getting more gas into the domestic market is obviously key.
WA's 15 per cent domestic gas reservation policy — supported on a bipartisan basis at a state politics level — once faced hostile criticism federally from both the ALP and the Coalition.
Not any longer.
Federal Labor now supports a "national interest test" for future or significantly expanded gas projects, which would potentially impose a domestic gas quota.
The Turnbull Government is not ruling out a reservation policy either.
But sovereign risk means it's probably too late to impose any reservation policy on existing LNG projects in Queensland or elsewhere.
However, if the companies do not accelerate the exploitation of their gas reserves, there is another tactic that will likely be used against them.
It's a policy successfully deployed against oil and gas companies sitting on rich, undeveloped resource tenements off the coast of WA: use it or lose it.
Topics: alternative-energy, electricity-energy-and-utilities, industry, government-and-politics, federal-government, australia
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